Digital Citizenship and Responsible Social Media Behaviour Among Generation Z
Keywords:
Citizenship, Responsibility, Literacy, Privacy, GenerationAbstract
Generation Z participates in social media as an everyday environment for communication, learning, identity formation, consumption, and civic expression. This conceptual article examines how digital citizenship can strengthen responsible social media behaviour by integrating ethical participation, information judgement, respectful conduct, privacy agency, security awareness, and reflective identity management. The analysis synthesises contemporary and foundational scholarship to identify five pressures that weaken responsible behaviour: algorithmic attention capture, misinformation, cyberbullying and toxicity, privacy erosion, and commercially shaped identity performance. It then develops five explanatory mechanisms, namely algorithmic awareness, verification norms, empathy and accountability, privacy agency, and reflective management of influence, consumption, and identity. The article argues that responsible behaviour cannot be attributed solely to individual self-control because platform design, peer norms, institutional practices, and commercial incentives shape the conditions under which choices are made. Strategic pathways are proposed for embedding digital citizenship across curriculum and campus life, strengthening media verification, developing bystander capability, institutionalising privacy and security practice, and supporting reflective social media use. The contribution is an integrated capability perspective that links individual agency with institutional and technological responsibility for sustainable Generation Z participation in networked society.
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